of unusual size and richness of ornament, where one of the _loculi_ bore an inscription on the mortar which had secured the grave-stone, invoking the assistance of "Januarius, Agatopus (for Agapitus), and Felicissimus, martyrs!" This, of course, was a strong confirmation of the conjecture which had been published so long before; but this was all which he could produce in the first number of his _Bollettino_ in January, 1863. In the second number he could add that, as he was going to press (February 21), small fragments of an inscription on marble had been disinterred from the same place, of which only single letters had yet been found, but which, he did not hesitate to say, had been written by Pope Damasus and contained his name, as well as the name of {132} St. Januarius. In March he published the twelve or fourteen letters which had been discovered, arranging them in the place he supposed them to have occupied in the inscription, which he conjecturally restored, and which consisted altogether of more than forty letters. In April he was able still further to add, that they had now recovered other portions; amongst the rest, a whole word, or rather the contraction of a word (_episcop._ for _episcopus_), exactly in accordance with his conjecture, though, at the time he made the conjecture, only half of one of the letters had yet come to light. We need not pursue the subject further. Enough has been said to satisfy those of our readers who have any acquaintance with the catacombs, both as to the kind and the degree of interest and importance which belong to this publication. Its intelligence, however, is by no means confined to the catacombs. The basilica of San Clemente; the recent excavations at San Lorenzo, _fuori le mura_; the postscript of St. Pamphilus the Martyr at the end of one of his manuscript copies of the Bible, reproduced in the Codex Sinaiticus lately published by Tischendorf; the arch of Constantine; ancient scribblings on the wall (_graffiti_) of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine, etc., etc., are subjects of able and learned articles in the several numbers we have received. With reference to the _graffiti_, one singular circumstance mentioned by De Rossi is worth repeating here. Most of our readers are probably acquainted with the _graffiti_ from this place, published by P. Garrucci, in which one Alessamenus is ridiculed for worshipping as his God the figure of a man, but with the head of an ass, nailed to a cross. P. Garrucci had very reasonably conjectured that this was intended as a blasphemous caricature of the Christian worship; and recently other _graffiti_ in the very same place have been discovered with the title _Episcopus_, apparently given in ridicule to some Christian youth; for that the room on whose walls these scribblings appear was used for educational purposes is abundantly proved by the numerous inscriptions announcing that such or such a one _exit de paedagogio_. We seem, therefore, in